V0G 2B0

Canada's postal codes are in the form A1A 1A1 with the first letter denoting province or territory, extending east to west. Out here in BC our codes begin with V. People who live in cities typically have a range of numbers in their postal code. The Ontario street where I grew up was N2H 4N4. However in rural parts of the country the postal codes all end in zero, and often the remaining digits are zeros and ones, leading to codes that can be said like words. Our code here is V0G 1S0, pronounced in our household as "vojisso." We pick up our mail at the post office in New Denver. If you live in a Silverton, you'll pick up your mail here, where your postal code will be V0G 2B0, or "vojtobow," which I remember as "vegetable." Mailboxes are the place to post about late-breaking community events, like a Giant Garage Sale on Saturday.

Big birch

Some locals claim this is the world's biggest birch tree and over a hundred years old. Most such trees grow live fast and die young, within 20-30 years. This mammoth takes the arms reach of three and a half children to span the circumference of its trunk.

Back lane

Not an active Imperial Oil Service Station. Just an antique sign salvaged and installed on a back lane by someone's garage. Silverton no longer has a service station. The place that sold gasoline until 15 years ago is now a Healing Arts and Wellness Centre. Times change.

Silverton Gallery

The gallery building itself was once a schoolhouse. It is now a multi-purpose community arts and culture space. Outdoors it houses the mining exhibit.

Mining tramway

Part of the outdoor mining museum exhibit at Silverton Gallery. The towers are reproductions, the hardware mostly original. Mining is what opened this area up in the late 1890s. Old mine workings are in the mountains everywhere.

A few years ago a crop of marijuana was discovered growing in the buckets of the tram. It was an interesting juxtaposition of historical and contemporary Slocan culture.

Rare ice

Slocan Lake doesn't freeze. It is so deep that no matter how cold the air is, unless the wind is incredibly still for weeks on end, the 50-degrees-Fahrenheit water hundreds of metres down is continually mixed with the surface water. At most only the still edges of the lake freeze. While the occasional small lakes that are up near mountain passes do freeze, the snow falls heavily there, and in amongst the peaks the winds are not sustained enough to blow the ice clear. So it's unusual to get a clear glassy surface on lakes around here. But it happens once in a while and when it does it's absolutely magical.

Icicles

Fire hydrant

Linda at Occasional Scotland asked for a fire hydrant photo. It took me a while yesterday to find a hydrant -- most were still buried. But this one had been properly dug out, probably by the village's bobcat loader, before the most recent snowfall and is therefore still partly visible.

Many towns affix long vertical metal poles to their hydrants, with small yellow octagons at the top, to aid in locating hydrants in the snow. We have few enough hydrants here that I guess the three or four village employees who do the snow-clearing just know where they are.

Frost on glassy lake

Frost porcupine

Really just a log frozen into the ice near the edge of a lake, coated in magnificent hoar-frost.

Skating rink

An informal community skating rink, maintained by volunteers, behind an area business.

Idaho peak

The big peak (7480 ft., more than 6700 ft. above lake level) on the east side of the Slocan Lake. Topped by a fire lookout which is no longer in use, the road and trail access to Idaho stays snowbound until July.

Villa Dome Quixote

The Domes

Villa Dome Quixote, an installation of dome-shaped cottages and a hostel, built using mill ends (scraps of lumber no longer than 14").

Nature Boy 2 -- Clean Sweep

This is the westerly side-chute of the Nature Boy avalanche. Most of the snow and debris came down a little to the east, but this side chute is such an amazing illustration of the way avalanches can denude a mountain-side. This gully didn't really exist before. There was nothing but a slight depression in the ground in what was forest. Now an eroded gully extends far up the mountain, the trees swept clean, the forest that used to be here now part of the debris pile on the far side the the highway. A dusting of new snow has made the gully quite pretty.

Nature Boy 1

Nature Boy was the big avalanche that came down about 6 kilometres from the main village, closing highway access for more than a week from the east. The highway has now been open for almost two weeks but the remnants of Nature Boy are still very much in evidence and will be for months. This is part of a pile of timber that was within the snow that was swept over the highway. Many of these trees were over 40 cm in diameter.

Kootenay Shire

A unique driveway sign marking a private residence.

Waiting for spring

A farm truck, buried in a field of snow, waits for spring.

Shoes

I guess that in other communities this is the sort of impulse that produces graffiti. Here we get pairs of worn-out shoes slung over electrical lines.

The big snow ... 2

Not much height left on this sign. And still it snows...

Winter trees

Keeping abreast of things

With the weather keeping people housebound or shovelling much of the time, and regular community activities on hiatus due to weather, the local cafés become important places to meet and catch up on what's happening. Whose chimneys and sheds have collapsed? Who is still without power? Can you tell Mitch I've cleared my roof, so I don't need him after all? Do you think Rod could fit my mom on his plowing list? Is Jim's water still frozen? It all gets sorted out here at the Panini Café.

The big snow

There's been lots of snow here recently. They're running out of places to put it to keep the roads clear, so it sometimes gets pushed up pretty high in front of homes. After the thaw earlier this week, the snow is dirty and things are, shall we say, not at their most picturesque these days.

Welcome

Somehow the illustration on the sign and the actual setting seem a little incongruous, don't you think?

Avalanche arms at work

The roads are nasty here right now. Two of the three roads that connect our community to the outside world have been closed for over a day now. The trip over the third has been described by locals as "the worst driving I've had to do in years." At lower elevations the roads are just slushy like this. But as the roads wind up to higher elevations the amount of snowfall dramatically increases, the slush is half-frozen, and there have been copious small and larger avalanches onto the highway.

They clear the avalanches as soon as they can do so safely, but they don't re-open the road until the avalanche danger has de-escalated.

Obey all signs

During frequent snowstorms driving becomes fraught with hazards, not the least of which is that the road hazard warnings are invisible. This one may warn of a school bus turnaround or a sharp curve ahead -- who's to know?

Snow story

Tiny perfect mouse paw and tail prints in the snow.

Kohan Teahouse

Rhododendrons, minus 8

Rhododendrons generally grow quite well here in the acidic soil. They don't much like the really cold temperatures, though, and below about minus 2 the leaves begin to curl tightly. The curling maximizes at about minus 8 Celsius, as shown here. In between, the amount of droop-and-curl correlates pretty well with the weather and is a useful gauge of the temperature.

Holiday Lights at the Kohan

Christmas lights at the volunteer-maintained community Kohan Reflection Garden. View from beneath the tea house gazebo.